


Bloodstream

by persephone20



Series: the Haunted series [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-13
Updated: 2011-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:16:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU in which Elena is romantically involved with both brothers, following the sequence of events in the last 3 episodes of season 1. Follows on a couple of weeks after <i>Haunted.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bloodstream (1/4)

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank the episode 'Rose', the wonderful coquilleon, and the letter 'B' for this particular fic.

Life in Mystic Falls was... pleasant for a while. As pleasant as could be expected in a town filled with vampires, and witches, and the gods only knew what else. Especially when two of those vampires were the Salvatore brothers. She still had no idea how she was meant to act while the three of them were around each other in front of other people. While it was only the three of them, Elena was more than comfortable. How not? In that situation, she knew exactly where both Damon and Stefan stood. She was Stefan’s girlfriend, and she and Damon were… still working out how they should be defined. She didn’t take Damon as the type to enter lightly into emotional commitments. And she really didn’t want to enter lightly into anything with him either. If the two of them ended up — was ‘going out’ the right term? Whenever she looked at Damon, she just couldn’t quite seem to make the term fit — then she wanted it to be real. She wanted it to be something that lasted.

When other people were around, she felt like they were looking at all three of them, judging her with their eyes, before Elena herself had even come up to a decision either way. In a couple of weeks, the best thing Elena had found to distract herself from her own love dramas was an introduction to the new girl Jeremy had recently been seeing. She was coming that night to a dinner that Jenna had organised so that she could invite Alaric.

“I think it’s good that he’s seeing someone else.” Jenna nodded to the lettuce, leaving the next sentence off. There were sentences that Jenna didn’t like saying, like those that included the names of unfortunate, young, dead girls.

Elena smiled ruefully. It was moments like this which reassured her that they were doing the right thing by keeping Jenna from knowing about vampires. She wondered how Alaric was doing it sometimes, but it was another of those sentences that went unsaid.

“Yeah, she sounds like she’s going to be really nice. I can’t wait to meet her.”

That sentiment lasted until just after Anna walked into the Gilbert residence. Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw Jeremy bound up from the couch to meet her. Anna gave him a rather awkward smile, probably more in response to the odd look Elena was giving her than anything else.

“Elena, get out of the way so that she can come in,” Jeremy asked, with all the manner of a brother embarrassed by his older sister.

Elena gave another glance in Anna’s direction, tried to make it a smile, and stepped slowly out of the way. Anna walked past her, and Elena frowned. There were only handful of people who had that age above their years serenity, and only two of them, to Elena's knowledge, had invitations to this house. Jeremy hadn't exactly invited her in this time, but she walked in as though she had been here before. Was Elena just so used to drama that now she was seeing it everywhere? Or was it possible that Jeremy’s new girlfriend was a vampire? Did he even know?

Surely Stefan or Damon would have told her if there was another vampire in town?

“Elena, are you alright?” Jenna seemed concerned but, underneath that, there was an expression on Jenna’s face that told Elena to stop freaking out Jeremy’s nice, new girlfriend.

“Uh. Yeah. Sorry, Jer. Nice to meet you…?” Elena paused in her well-meant apology, realising that she couldn’t even remember the name of Jeremy’s girlfriend. Had Jenna given it?

“It’s Anna,” the shorter girl answered. Her smile was a little bit more stable now that Jeremy was by her side. “Good to see you again, Jenna,” Anna said.

She had been in this house before. Jeremy shot Elena a none too pleased look while Anna’s attention was on Jenna. Elena sighed. Great. Only three minutes in, and she’d already given Jeremy a new reason to be mad at her.

She thought the night could only get better once Stefan and Damon arrived. Their arrival meant that she had something else to focus on other than Anna’s new appearance into their life. Surprisingly enough, the brothers arrived with Alaric in tow. Alaric was all smiles. It was like his job as a teacher had imbued him with an ability to defuse all situations.

“Look who I found loitering outside,” Alaric said, even as he wandered up to Jenna and gave her a warm kiss of greeting.

Stefan did the same when he crossed to Elena’s side. “We bought wine,” he said.

Damon stood by the front door, hands in his pockets. He was the only one who didn’t have anything to add. Strangely, he didn’t seem surprised to see Anna there. Though they didn’t talk directly, Elena caught Anna glancing at Damon, at Stefan and Damon both, glancing at them and knowing they were vampires like she was. But she didn’t seem surprised either.

“You might have told me,” Elena hissed to Stefan, in a moment when Anna was helping Jenna finish setting the table, and Jeremy was talking to Damon.

“Told you… what?” Stefan asked, honestly confused.

“That there was another vampire in town?” Elena replied, only just managing to make her gesture in Anna’s direction subtle. “Before she showed up in my house?”

Stefan looked at Anna for a moment. Then he murmured, “She’s… harmless. Or at least, she won’t hurt your brother.”

That defused some of her anger, but not all of it. Elena settled her arms over her stomach. “Oh? And how do you know that?”

“She loves him.” Stefan was looking her in the eye as he spoke, letting that same love shine out of his eyes when he spoke to her.

“Oh,” she said again. This time, he had managed to defuse all her anger. The next time she looked at Jeremy and Anna, she saw it a bit differently. Without her Protective Sister goggles, she could see what Stefan had seen. It was obvious in her deference towards him, the way that she kept on trying to keep up her good impression on Jenna—without the use of compulsion—in a way that looked very similar to the way Stefan behaved. “Oh,” she said again.

“Well this looks like a very interesting conversation I’ve stumbled in upon.” Damon’s voice suddenly entered the conversation. He was all smiles when Elena and Stefan looked up to him. “Come on. Share it, then. What’s the juicy gossip?”

Once, Elena remembered, this would have annoyed her; the way Damon would come into a conversation and immediately expect to be given all the attention. Now, it had become something endearing, something that made her think of him. How things had changed. She gave him an indulgent smirk, still completely without inclination to share what they’d been talking about.

“Not everything’s about you, Damon,” she said, a cheeky smile on her face as she made sure her hip ran into him when she walked past.

“But so much of it is,” Damon replied, completely unrepentant. When he looked to Stefan, either for support or for the secrets they’d been speaking of, he got only an amused shake of the head and as little information as Elena had given him. “Oh, come on.”

Dinner was an enjoyable affair, after the surprise of Anna had passed. Actually, she got along very well with both Damon and Stefan, and conversation flowed across the table quite easily.

“So,” Elena asked, while there was a lull in conversation not long after the main meal had been served. She’d noticed Anna ate the food that was offered no differently to Stefan and Damon, regardless of the fact it gave her no sustenance. “How long have you been in town, Anna?”

“I was born here,” Anna replied promptly. “But then, you know how it is. Mom thought the schools were better elsewhere so we moved away for a bit. We decided home schooling was best after all, and you can’t stay away from home forever.” There was a smile that appeared on Anna’s lips about halfway through the telling, but it turned to a more private smile shared between her and Jeremy towards the end, when she reached out to take his hand.

“Finding schools of as high a standard as they used to be is a tough thing,” Damon said, matter of factly.

Elena looked towards Damon, then Stefan, but neither one of their faces gave anything away. So much for her thoughts on investigating.

“Tell me about it,” Jenna piped in, oblivious to all possible undertones. “Thankfully, Mystic Falls has managed to employ one of the good ones.” She leaned close to Alaric as she said it, and he grinned a little bashfully as he reached out for a potato that was rolling away from him on his plate. “So you and your mom are thinking of staying in town now, then?” Jenna continued. At Anna’s nod, Jenna said, “That’s good. Jeremy could use a… I mean…” Jenna blanched. “Stability is good for all teenagers,” she finished lamely.

“Of course,” Anna replied, barely suppressing her mirth.

Alaric brought dessert in from the kitchen after that, as Jenna had made all of this wonderful food for them and shouldn’t be expected to get up.

“I hope I’ll have helpers in the kitchen after dessert,” Alaric called back jovially as he was heading into the kitchen.

Jenna smiled at the handful of teenagers assembled around the dining room table. “This is nice,” she said. To Jeremy and Elena in particular, she added, “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do this after your parents died, but I think I’m doing alright.”

“You’re doing fine, Jenna,” Elena was quick to reassure.

“More than fine,” Jeremy added.

As it turned out, Stefan and Jeremy ended up being Alaric’s helpers in the kitchen for cleanup. The kitchen really couldn’t fit more than that comfortably with everyone expecting to be useful all at once. Jenna hovered around the edges of the kitchen, only kept that far out by Alaric’s repetitive threads of a wound up tee towel whip.

**

Damon, Elena and Anna settled in on the couches in the living room. As Elena leaned back, Damon lifted his arm around to the couch behind her. At the gesture, and how obvious it was to anyone watching, Elena stiffened for a moment. Of course, it didn’t help that Anna was sitting across from them, probably watching their every move like a vulture. She tried to relax, to not make the gesture of lying against Damon’s arm in her aunt’s living room look so… well, awkward, but she had a good idea that she’d failed even before Anna spoke.

“It’s okay, Elena. You don’t have to put on an act for me.” Anna smirked as though the very idea was ludicrous.

It didn’t seem so ludicrous to Elena. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

Anna shrugged. “It’s not like it’s uncommon for women to lean against both Salvatore brothers. Usually, if they have a taste for Stefan, they’ll have a taste for Damon too.”

Behind her head, Elena could feel the movement in Damon’s shoulder. Whether in agreement, or in a gesture to shut Anna up, Elena didn’t look to see. She could imagine all too easily the expression that would be on his face. Something like a, “I can’t help it if it’s true,” kind of expression. Suddenly, and not for the first time, Elena hated that expectation. She was not Katherine.

And that thought led onto another. “How would you know?” she demanded.

Suddenly, that cat with cream look vanished from Anna’s face. “What?”

“I said.” Elena sat forward so that Damon’s arm was no longer touching her. “How. Would you. Know?”

“Elena...” Damon tried his hand at defusing the situation, but he didn't have Alaric’s knack for it. The intent stare between Elena and Anna continued.

Anna laughed uneasily. “Well, you know, all the rumours in this town… Not to mention what’s written in Jonathan Gilbert’s journal.”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Jeremy asked lightly, innocent of the tension of the conversation he’d walked in on, at the same time as Elena said,

“Liar.”

The accusation was stark in the room, and could not be taken back. Stefan had come to join them in the living room and Alaric and Jenna were in earshot. There was hardly a friendly eye upon her. Well, Stefan’s was hardly unfriendly, it was just shocked. Shocked that his precious Elena could act so unreasonably, no doubt.

And, of course, Elena couldn’t say what had led up to her proclamation of Anna as a liar in Jenna’s hearing.

“Elena!” Jenna was slow to discipline, but to overlook the obvious faux pas would have looked like bad parenting. “Apologise to Anna.”

Elena set her jaw. She stared at Anna until she realised she was the only one staring. Anna was looking to Jeremy, seeming to be asking for an escape. From her!

That last stopped her and infuriated her all at once. Instead of apologising, instead of even looking Jenna or anyone else in the eye, Elena stood up from the couch and strode up the stairs to her bedroom. Jenna’s voice from the bottom of the stairs made not a speck of difference. Eventually, she stopped calling. The dinner party didn’t last much longer than that. Elena deliberately closed her ears to anything that was being said downstairs in her absence, already feeling severely mortified by her own behaviour.

It was to distract herself more than anything else that she moved across the room to open her window for some fresh air. She didn’t assume (though maybe she’d hoped) that one of the brothers would be on the other side of it. But neither of them were. They were probably as mortified by her behaviour as she was.

And the thing was, apart from her feelings of fear for Jeremy while he was dating a vampire, and the assumption that she was anything at all like Katherine, Anna really hadn’t given her a reason to go so out of line. She had, in fact, backed off the instant that Elena had started to sound offended, something that Damon himself had noticed, and the day when Damon was more conscious of social niceties than her was a worrying day indeed.

The point was, she didn’t know how to do this without becoming like Katherine. She didn’t know how to be involved with both of them without that happening. There was only so much a person could take of hearing they were similar to something else before they started to see it themselves. And Elena was definitely starting to see it herself.

There was a feeling of power attached in having both Salvatore brothers on her arm. She’d be lying if she said otherwise, and the words to prove it were written in the latest pages of her diary. The feelings she had when she walked into a room and knew both of their eyes were on her were intoxicating. And when she was across the room, or talking to Bonnie, or doing anything else, while that attention was on her, she was okay. It was only when she had to take responsibility for that attachment that the wheels fell off the emotional and metaphoric automobile.

She thought she’d demonstrated that this evening with aplomb.

“Heavy thoughts?”

Damon was resting comfortably against the outside of her window frame with his head in his palm. He looked positively Cheshire; Elena might almost have looked behind him for a tail.

“I would have come sooner,” Damon continued. “But Stefan and I had to draw straws first.”

The image of Damon and Stefan literally drawing straws to see which one of them came back to comfort her was just absurd enough to crack a smile. That one of them still wanted to see her was amazing enough. That both of them still wanted her filled her with relief.

Still. “I acted like an idiot tonight.”

“Yeah.” Damon shifted on the window sill. “You did a bit. Do you think that I can come in? It’s a bit uncomfortable out here. I was trying to be polite, but…”

“Come in,” Elena said, waving a hand absently, and was then astonished by how comfortable she’d become to having Damon be a part of her bedroom. He slid over the window sill with all the grace of a large feline; Cheshire once again. He stopped shy of being within arm’s reach from her, judging correctly that she still needed the space, and so lingered a couple of steps from the window. Elena remained standing by the end of her bed.

He gave her a lop-sided smile then, almost as if he knew what she’d been thinking so hard about. “It’s our fault, really. Anna was one of the vampires who avoided the tomb. Like us.” She watched as he waited a moment to allow that to sink in. Anna was as old as them. At least. Which meant she had known them when Katherine… “We didn’t know she was seeing Jeremy. One of us would have told you if we did.” His eyes implored her to believe him, and she did. Of course she did.

“That wasn’t what was bothering me,” she said gently.

“Ah.” Damon grimaced, but his eyes narrowed, as if he struggled to guess. “It’s our arrangement again, isn’t it? It’s too hard.”

He said it as though he was expecting her to back out of it and, in some ways, that was harder than all the thoughts she’d been having to that effect. Though he managed to cloak it well, she could see the pain and doubt under the light inevitability in his tone.

“It’s not…” Elena started to lie, but the half shake of Damon’s head stopped her. He would know it if she lied, and it would drive a wedge between them. She started again. “It is… but not in the way you’re thinking.”

She sat down, allowing the mattress of her bed to take her weight. Damon remained where he was, watchful and cautious.

“Okay, it’s like this. Katherine went after you and Stefan. She pretty much ruined the comfortable relationship you two shared, and then disappeared without trace leaving you and Stefan reeling for more than a hundred years.” Elena’s eyes told him to tell her to stop if she got anything wrong in her summation. He didn’t tell her to stop. She lowered her eyes. “Trouble is, I want you both, but I don’t want to be like Katherine. It’s bad enough that I look like her. It’s bad enough that every vampire we seem to meet makes a reference about her. I couldn’t bear it if… if you and Stefan started to think… if you…”

Damon did stop her there, where the flow of her announcement seemed to cease. He didn’t offer words immediately, instead choosing to hold onto her arms, near her shoulders, and keep her steady. He waited until the somewhat desperate glaze in her eyes became reassured by the look in his.

“You’re not Katherine.” He kept his face straight then, lest Elena attempt to break physical or eye contact, added, “I wouldn’t love you like this if you were.”

Elena’s tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Like what?” She barely managed to make the words sound out loud.

“Like…” Exasperation entered his eyes and left just as suddenly. “The world stops for me while you’re in it, Elena. I haven’t felt that in- I haven't felt that, not even with Katherine.” His lips flattened. “You calm me.”

Elena gave a tremulous grin around tears that were suddenly threatening to fall. “Well, you certainly seem calmer than when you first arrived.”

“That’s all you.” Damon murmured. He lifted a hand from her shoulder to brush dark hair out of Elena’s face. Her eyelids fluttered shut as she leaned into his palm. Damon kept his hand there, and Elena breathed in the scent that was uniquely him, drawing it in until, eventually, her lips found and pressed softly against the calloused skin of the middle of his palm.

She heard Damon’s sudden rush of indrawn breath, but still he didn’t move. Elena too stayed still, the side of her face remaining against the coolness of his hand. She didn’t think she had the power of will to stand up against the naked want that would likely be in his eyes if she looked up right then. For a couple of moments, she concentrated on just remembering how to breathe.

“Elena.” Damon’s voice was raspy, informing her that she had run out of time.

Elena sat up slowly, trying to create a little bit of distance between their faces without making it look obvious. “I love you,” she whispered. It wasn’t the first time she’d told him, but it was the first time in these circumstances.

Damon’s lips twisted wryly. “I love you.” Perhaps he was remembering the first time she’d told him she loved him, of the argument they’d been having. This time was nothing like that. It was perfect in its simplicity. Damon’s eyes drifted to her lips before he murmured, “I should go.”

“No… Stay.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d had a chance to process them, but she realised, upon the saying, that she wanted him to. It would be the first time they had spent the night together. Always before, he had left her at the front step like a gentleman or, in the times they’d been at the boarding house spending time with Stefan, he’d left her out the front of Stefan’s room.

“I should… text Stefan I won’t be home tonight,” Damon said, eyeing her carefully as he started to pull his phone out of his back pocket.

“Do,” Elena said, before surreptitiously changing into the pyjama shorts and tank top she would be wearing into bed. Damon’s eyes noted that, but he didn’t say a word. Instead, he too stripped only to his boxer shorts and black t-shirt before settling in beside her. They took a while to get comfortable next to each other, in the way that people sharing a bed for the first time do. Once he lay one arm across her pillow, and the other around her, keeping her close, they fit.

He was gone before she woke up, before Jenna had a chance to come upstairs and find him there. But the note he’d left on her pillow stayed on her person the rest of the entire day.


	2. Bloodstream (2/4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just more thanks to the wonderful coquilleon for being my beta, and my memory for suddenly remembering I'd been slack about posting the rest of this fic up.

“You could have at least made an effort with her.” Jeremy was standing in the bathroom, not even looking at her reflection next to his when she walked in the mirror in front of them.

Elena blinked. After the night before, it was honestly a little bit of a struggle to be able to think about anything else other than having Damon in her bed. He’d been the perfect gentleman. Elena had to quickly wipe the wistful smile from her face even as it started creeping up. Knowing her luck, that would be the one instant when Jeremy chose to look at her.

“Jer… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

“What? Completely alienate her? Be rude to her?” Jeremy sneered. “You might get away with talking to your friends like that, but you don’t get to talk to my girlfriend that way. And you certainly don’t get to treat me like I’m some ignorant bug so beneath your high and mighty shoes.”

It seemed more like something they would have fought over when their parents were still alive, back when Elena Gilbert was the most popular girl in her year level, when she was a shoe in to be this year’s Miss Mystic, instead of caring about none of that at all. Their mom wasn’t getting ready in her bathroom, ready to tell them to stop fighting if they didn’t sort it out for themselves. Most of the time, Jenna tried to ignore their fighting. Elena thought it made her feel like a bad surrogate parent when they fought amongst themselves.

But none of that was what this was about. Elena swallowed. This wasn’t because she was popular, or had high and mighty shoes. This had been coming for a while. Almost since Stefan had first come into her life. Since Vicky had gone out of his. Elena just hadn’t wanted to see it.

“Jer… Do you… know something you want to talk about?”

That was suitably broad. And yet, if Jeremy knew something of what she thought he knew, it was just specific enough.

Instead of answering, Jeremy snorted. He ignored her as he applied aftershave, then left the bathroom. Since his bedroom was on the other side of the door, it didn’t take much for Elena to follow him.

“Jeremy-”

“Do you know how stupid you sound?” Jeremy whirled around to take another dig at her. “ ‘Do you know something?’ ” It was a perfectly horrible mockery of her own voice as she’d asked him. Elena closed her eyes and tried to wish this conversation towards a happy ending. “I do know something,” Jeremy said, surprising her. “I read your journal. I know all about it.”

Elena gasped. “Jeremy!”

He wasn’t finished. “I know that Vicky was a vampire. How you covered it up. How you got Damon to change my memories so it didn’t happen. So none of it happened. Do you know what it was like reading stuff like that?” He sneered at her. It was an awful expression, filled with loathing that was directed both at her and at himself.

She’d taken it away from him, Elena realised now for the first time. When they’d taken away his memories, they’d taken away his power to deal with it himself. He saw that power being taken away as a weakness on his part.

“So what were you going to do this time, Elena?” Jeremy asked, and for the first time, Elena could see the fear that was majoritively driving this diatribe. “Are you going to make me forget about Anna? She’s been here heaps of times. Jenna likes her, you know? Or, you would know. If you’d been here, like, at all. Instead of pretty much living with your own vampire boyfriend.”

It was the first time he’d said the word, and now it was out in the open, taunting them from the space between them in Jeremy’s room. For a moment, Elena was glad that Jenna didn’t decide to come in and break them up when they were having arguments. Then her mind snapped back to the conversation.

“You read my diary…” Elena began. Jeremy didn’t even deign to give that a comment. “You know…”

“Yeah.” Jeremy breathed out heavily. “I know.”

The two siblings were at an impasse, and yet Elena felt relieved. Finally. It was finally out in the open.

“So,” Jeremy started. “Is that the reason why you were such a bitch to her last night?”

“No, I…” Elena lowered her eyes. They had been this open with each other, but Elena just couldn’t make herself go the rest of the way. “That was something else.”

“Of course it was.” Jeremy was already shutting off again. Elena could see it happening, could see it, and couldn’t see a way to stop it.

Except… “Jeremy, it’s not what you think.”

“Oh? And you know what I’m thinking, now?” He had all the belligerence of being sixteen behind him, and Elena had all the shame of indecision.

“It’s Damon.” As soon as she said that, she knew she’d put it wrongly. Jeremy immediately recoiled, not from her, but from what he assumed was about to come next. It was worse than what was really coming next. That thought made the rest of the words come out in a rush. “He and I… me and him… We have feelings for each other, Jeremy. Stefan knows. I just don’t know how to act around him when others are there. And Anna… I don’t even know Anna.”

There was a long silence, a really long silence, that seemed to swallow all the angst and hidden secrets, all the anger and raised voices, until Elena and Jeremy were just looking at each other across the room, each one wondering what the other one was thinking. For the first time in weeks, the guards around Jeremy’s face were lowered.

“I think… I need to sit down,” Jeremy said, eventually.

Elena nodded herself, feeling a little bit numb.

It was a while longer before any of them spoke again.

“So you and Damon… are you sleeping together?”

“No!” Elena asserted that quickly, but more because of the mental images and yearnings that accompanied it than for any other reason. They weren’t sleeping with each other in the way that Jeremy meant.

Jeremy looked up at her, one eyebrow quirked. “Okay…” he said.

Another period of silence.

From the first level of the house, Jenna’s voice could be heard, finally calling up to them. “Guys! You’re going to be late for school if you don’t get a move on.”

Both siblings glanced towards the still closed door of his bedroom, but neither of them moved other than that.

“I guess we’d better get to school…” Jeremy murmured eventually.

When they walked to school, it must have been the first time they’d walked together in… a really long time. Elena couldn’t remember exactly how long. The sparse words that were shared between them on that walk weren’t all that bad, really.

After the initial shock, Jeremy showed mostly confusion, and such questions as, “When you go over and stay at the boarding house…?”

“I’m visiting both of them. Well, not all the time. Sometimes I have time that’s just with Stefan. And Damon and I have gone out on a couple of dates. Mostly, we go out of Mystic for that. But there’s not a lot of privacy in the boarding house. Not with-”

“Vampire hearing,” they said at the same time. A strange look of shared awareness had passed between them then, before Jeremy had gone back to staring at the footpath.

Elena’s phone went off in her back, indicating a text message just come through. As she read it, Jeremy glanced over curiously. Elena smiled. It was okay to smile now.

I look forward to seeing you at school today. I hope you enjoyed your evening last night.

“Is that… Damon?” Jeremy hazarded a guess.

Elena shook her head. “Stefan.”

“Oh.” Jeremy’s forehead furrowed. Then he said, “I know a lot of guys who would be killing to be in your position right now.”

“What?” Elena looked up from the message she was typing. “Dating both of the Salvatores?”

Jeremy ‘pffft’ that, but she could see the deliberate misconception had amused him. “Dating two girls. They’d think that was awesome.”

Elena sent off her reply message--Jeremy and I will be at school soon. xoxo--before looking at her brother again. “You don’t think it’s awesome?” She was only faintly surprised that Jeremy wasn’t grouping himself with ‘the guys’.

“Nah,” Jeremy confirmed. “Anna’s plenty enough for me. She’s like nothing else in this world…” Jeremy shook his head abruptly, then looked through his hair to Elena. “You know, I’d really hoped you’d like her.”

“I don’t dislike her…” Elena started. “Look, olive branch? I’d love to meet her again, get to know her a little.”

The corner of Jeremy’s lips quirked in a smile. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

**

Stefan had a ready smile on his features when Elena and Jeremy came into sight. He'd practiced in a little in front of the mirror before he'd left the boarding house that morning. In addition to Damon’s text message the night before, he’d woken up to find Damon in an extraordinarily good mood, although the only words he’d been able to get out of Damon had been, “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, brother.”

That was good. It pleased Stefan that Damon was inclined to be more of a gentleman with Elena. As if the last half dozen dates in which he’d done exactly that hadn’t persuaded him.

From these things, Stefan had come to understand that Elena and Damon had shared a good night together. And that only made him a little bit nervous. Nothing to worry about, though, hence the ready smile.

Elena said friendly parting words to Jeremy. Jeremy even had a brief wave for Stefan before he headed in the opposite direction.

“Things seem to be going well between you two again,” Stefan observed. As an introductory comment, it was easier than many other things he could have started with.

“Mmhmm,” Elena said, burrowing herself in his wonderfully strong arms. She obviously wasn't all that interested in talking about her brother, which was actually pretty reassuring to Stefan. “What are you looking so pleased about this morning, hmm?”

Damn it. He'd known he would probably go a little too far with the smile. He brought the wattage down when he next looked at her. All that was visible was the top of her head, so the effect was a little bit wasted. “I would have thought you would have been the one looking pleased with yourself this morning,” Stefan prompted gently.

To that, Elena responded with a profound blush. “I am…” she said eventually.

“But?” Stefan asked. She lifted her head from his chest and Stefan deliberately schooled his expression to neutrality. He wanted her to be able to talk to him about this stuff, not hide it from him. It would never work if she tried to keep things from each of them. Katherine had done that and...

Elena was not Katherine.

“But nothing.” Elena shook her head. “It's still a little bit weird, talking about it to you about it.”

Stefan looked at her, hoping the expression on his face was one of gentle, even indulgent, love. “Doesn’t have to be,” he said.

Elena smiled. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it eventually.”

They started walking towards classes, walking close to each other, hand clasped in hand. The conversation had gone well. Stefan thought the conversation had gone well.

“You coming to the boarding house tonight?” Stefan asked, more confident this time in his offhand tone.

“That an invitation?” Elena asked smartly as they entered one of the school corridors together.

“You don’t need an invitation,” Stefan said. “You’re always welcome.”

“Then yes,” Elena replied. “I believe I will.”

**

Anna was also at the boarding house when Stefan and Elena arrived after school. Elena flashed her an uncertain smile which Anna didn’t bother to return. It was clear in the tension of their bodies that she and Damon had been having an intense conversation when Stefan and Elena interrupted.

“Something the matter?” Stefan asked.

Damon considered his brother. Stefan probably didn’t even realise the way that he stepped slightly in front of Elena’s body before asking any sort of question like that.

“There is, as a matter of fact. Something incredibly strange for us, I understand. Anna has just brought us news of the invention. An invention that Uncle John felt strongly enough to kill for.”

Anna looked ill.

“Jonathan Gilbert’s invention?” Stefan asked, either not noticing the change in Anna’s expression, or observing it and moving on.

“The one and only,” Damon replied, extending his arms as though this whole conversation was a performance.

“What does it… do?” Elena asked, taking a step around Stefan and speaking for the first time.

Damon inclined his head to Elena. He promptly got distracted, and forced himself back to the thought of her question rather than the feel of her fair skin against his. Several blinks, and an expression slightly wider-eyed later, and he was back on track.

“Oh, this?” Damon opened one of his hands, and the offending invention in question was revealed. Anna glared at him, clearly not in a great mood. “It will only kill all the vampires in Mystic Falls.”

Elena’s eyes popped open, and she glanced immediately to Stefan. She didn’t know Damon nearly well enough yet to know if this was

Evidently, Stefan didn’t know either. “Damon?”

Anna filled in when it seemed a subject not easily tackled by any of the others. “John Gilbert knew Damon had the invention. Mother told him. And so, he realised he didn’t need her alive anymore.” Anna’s voice was bitter, yet matter-of-fact, and her lips were twisted, and it looked as though it was taking all of the effort she could muster not to tear up.

Elena gave her the courtesy of pretending not to notice that.

“So, we don’t give him the invention. Simple,” Elena said.

Damon’s mouth tightened. This time it was he looking at Stefan.

“Not so simple,” Stefan was the one to say, and gently. “John Gilbert is working with Isobel. Alaric’s wife and…your birth mom.”

Elena just stared at him absently for a second. Then looked to Damon. Then to Anna. Anna, surprisingly enough, was the only vampire in that room that she could bare to look at, the only one in the room who wasn’t looking at her as if she was to be pitied. No, Anna was looking at her as though she was waiting for her to do something, anything, that might be useful.

For some reason, Elena felt determined not to let her think she couldn’t do that much.

“So we still don’t give it to her,” Elena said, prompting the two brothers. “It’s not as if she’s been the best mom ever. I’ve never even met her.” And that compelled suicider did not count.

Still, it was a couple of moments before either Damon or Stefan moved to make any comment.

“Okay. I’m all with the plan of not giving the crazy vampire—Isobel—the weapon that is going to kill us all.” Damon showed his pleasure at that plan with the way his fingers wrapped around the device again. “But there’s still the problem of her and Uncle John killing people in order to get to it.” Damon’s eyes passed over the room and the people in it. “What do you suppose we do about that?”

**

It had taken a while for any of them to volunteer any kind of plan. Elena had long since gone to bed, after almost falling asleep against Stefan’s shoulder, despite her claims to the contrary.

After coming back from his bedroom, where he’d lain Elena gently on his bed, it had been decided that Anna was going to move into the boarding house (“It was Elena’s uncle that killed my mother. She’s here all the time, right? I’d much rather live here in the boarding house with two vampires. She owes me, which means you guys pay up.”), and Elena herself had been incriminated into the little plan concocted between Anna and Damon.

“It only makes good sense,” Anna tried to convince him, even as Stefan paced the lush living room with arms tightly crossed over his chest. Damon was reclined passively over the side of one of the arm chairs, silently watching. “After how easily mother and I showed we could come in here without garnering an invitation from the human living here.”

“That doesn’t stop John inviting himself inside,” Stefan replied, with gritted teeth.

Anna gave him a smile. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I think that between three vampires, we can make short work of him if he comes here alone.”

Stefan’s brows still rode very low on his forehead. “We can’t ask it of her,” he insisted quietly. “It’s not a good enough reason to ask.”

“If she wanted to, wouldn’t it be more like… offering?” Damon rose his argument without shifting on the arm chair. Stefan’s eyes darted to him, almost desperately, almost as if to say ‘Not you, too?’

Anna was standing between them, devil’s advocating the whole way. “She is kinda here all the time,” Anna reminded.

“How do you know that?” Stefan demanded.

“I am seeing Jeremy,” Anna reminded him with a faint smile.

Stefan turned his face aside, not liking the fact that Anna seemed to be laughing at him. His mind desperately tried to think things through in a sensible and reasonable manner. Elena and Damon were only just starting out together. Would it put too much pressure on the three of them for her to always be here all the time? Not to mention Anna’s newly intentioned presence, the new wild card in the whole thing. Surely it couldn’t all just go smoothly.

It was Damon’s soft voice speaking again that surprised him. While Stefan’s back was still turned, Damon spoke to the back of his head, “Whatever you want, brother.” It was a tone genuinely without judgement, whichever decision Stefan saw fit to come to. Stefan saw immediately the way Damon was viewing it. Stefan had the prior relationship with Elena. His decision held precedence.

In actual fact, it was Elena’s decision that should hold precedence here.

It was more than Stefan could fight against. In the end, he shook his head. “We’ll talk about it again in the morning. Elena’s not the only one who has school tomorrow.” With one last, troubled glance back towards the two of them, Stefan strode from the room, back up the stairs he’d travelled so recently with Elena in his arms.

Of course, his vampire hearing ensured that he overheard it when Anna said, “And after Elena moves in, we’ll have to convince Jeremy to move in too. Find a way of compelling Jenna that it’s okay, or something.”


	3. Bloodstream (3/4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU in which Elena is romantically involved with both brothers, following the sequence of events in the last 3 episodes of season 1. Follows on a couple of weeks after _Haunted._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just more thanks to the wonderful coquilleon for being my beta, and my memory for suddenly remembering I'd been slack about posting the rest of this fic up.

Elena’s attitude was significantly different from her ‘Don’t ask, don’t care’ attitude from the night before when she returned to the boarding house after school the next day. Stefan understood, having been within range to hear every word that had passed between Elena and her birth mom.

Damon and Anna could only guess. Damon hated to guess what had put those expressions onto Elena’s face.

She didn’t speak about what had passed at the Grill until the four of them were back at the boarding house. Anna called Jeremy on the way to apologetically cancel on the catch up they’d had planned. Elena used what she could hear of his voice through the phone as a focus back to normalcy. The little brother who was really her cousin was far more reassuring to the vampire mom she was related to. He sounded understanding. Anna sounded… gentler when she was on the phone to him.

Damon shut the door to the boarding house and took a moment to extend his senses around them. Only when he met Stefan’s eyes and Stefan gave a barely perceptible nod did some of the tension leave Damon. There were no vampires, no anybody, within hearing to them.

Anna was crouching in front of where Elena had slumped into the arm chair Damon had been lounging in the night before. “Are you… okay?” Anna looked as though she didn’t have the first idea of how to comfort Elena, but thought she should make the effort because she was Jeremy’s sister.

Elena nodded stiltedly. Stefan came back into her view, looking tall and assertive.

“Elena, you don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to. I heard everything. I can tell the others what happened.”

“No… it’s okay. I can do it.” She looked up to Stefan, to Damon, seeking to find strength in them both, but it was so hard to do with the threat Isobel had made hanging over her head. She just wanted it to go away, to never have to leave this house again. No outside vampires could come into the house if she were to become a permanent resident here. The only things she would have to think about would be how she was to manage her two boys , and she couldn’t imagine that would be something that would be too difficult to manage.

Except that whole idea sounded a whole lot like hiding, and Elena Gilbert didn’t hide from anyone.

She didn’t want to sit. She stood up again, and paced. Eventually, she had taken enough deep breaths that she felt able to take on a retelling of the events that had happened at the Mystic Grill. How Katherine would be fascinated by the resemblance between them. How coldly assessing her birth mom’s eyes had been when she’d said that. Elena found herself procrastinating as she neared the end of her tale, then bit her lip, and forced herself to look at Damon.

Damon already looked like he didn’t like the sound of what was coming.

“She talked about blood, Damon. She talked about blood being on my hands if I didn’t get you to give her the invention.”

Damon looked down to his hands. The invention wasn’t in them this time. He wasn’t stupid enough to take it out of the house, he’d barely trusted anyone to know it was in his possession, and this was exactly why. They were beaten, and he knew it. It wasn’t a nice feeling to have.

He’d already started changing the plan from Elena moving in with them to Elena coming with them as they drove far out of Mystic Falls after the invention was handed over. They’d tell no one where they were going. Damon was trying to put on a brave face and imagine it as 100 nights exactly like the first road trip Elena and Damon had shared together. He didn’t get a chance to voice this plan, before someone human came rushing through the door.

Damon pounced; years of reflexes had trained his muscles to do exactly what he wanted them to do, and when, with little or no preparation. Only when he heard a somewhat defenseless yelp did he register that this was not someone who was here to cause them trouble.

“Damon!” Anna admonished him, already stalking towards them. “Let Jeremy go.”

“Thanks.” Jeremy was wide-eyed and out of breath, and suddenly the very center of attention. He rubbed his arms even as he looked at Anna, and swallowed. “You said you were moving in here now. It sounded like something was wrong on the phone. What is it?”

Anna looked between Jeremy and Elena. “It’s pretty bad,” was all she said.

Jeremy’s eyes moved from Anna to Elena. The look on her face prompted him straight to her. “What is it, ‘Lena?” Even as he gathered her into his arms, his eyes darted to Damon and Stefan, as if one of them were directly responsible for his sister’s upset. Damon shrugged, and looked out towards the still open door. He had no idea that Jeremy knew about his arrangement with Elena, and wouldn’t have cared what Jeremy thought of it if he had. His only thought was that he would not be caught so off his guard again.

In the middle of the very tense situation, only Stefan had a possible ray of light to offer. “There is one another option.”

Anna seemed doubtful. “What’s that?”

“Bonnie.”

**

Bonnie consented to do the spell that would de-spell Jonathan Gilbert’s invention, but she was not without reservations over it.

“You know I don’t mind Stefan anymore. Stefan’s not a bad guy, but Damon isn’t a good one,” Bonnie told Elena, in urgent whispers.

Elena ducked her head and wished that she’d never been told about vampire super hearing. She refrained from turning her head, knowing she would meet Damon’s knowing smirk. She hated that her best friend hated her… Damon. It had been bad enough when Bonnie had been at loggerheads against Stefan, and Elena was thankful that the worst of that seemed to have passed. But the fact that neither Caroline nor Bonnie thought especially much of Damon was beginning to wear thin.

Elena closed her eyes and tried to sound calm. “If you’re willing to do it, you have to be willing to do it for all the vampires, Bonnie.” What had been an attempt at calm just came out tired. She opened her eyes and tried again. “Please, Bonnie.”

Bonnie’s lips tightened, but eventually—thankfully—she nodded.

“I’m doing this for you…” she said.

Elena knew. She didn’t have any further words to offer, feeling like she’d already offered them all. She had half turned away to check in on the others when Bonnie spoke again.

“Why, Elena?” Bonnie’s face was pleading with her, pleading that they could still understand each other like they had when they were young. “Give me one good reason, one reason why I should want to do this.”

Elena’s lips parted. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bonnie.”

“Anything. Just make me understand.” Bonnie was shaking just slightly with her need for understanding.

Elena tried to sum up what she was feeling. When she had it, she looked at Bonnie, unflinching. “They’re family. To me, they’re family. I can’t lose any more family.”

She had spoken honestly, but she could see from the pinched way that Bonnie reacted that Bonnie was thinking of her own lost family. She gave a short nod then, and turned away.

“I’ll do it.”

**

After that, the idea of meeting with Elena’s birth mom seemed almost easy. It wasn’t, of course. Isobel was still there, looking cold and unfeeling, like it couldn’t matter less to her that Elena was her daughter. But it was still easier than facing Bonnie. Because Elena hadn’t lost Bonnie yet, and she didn’t want to.

“I have the invention.”

“I knew you would,” Isobel replied, and her calm voice seemed to make mockery of all of them. Only Stefan and Damon had accompanied her to this meeting with Elena’s birth mom, but they would only step in if Isobel threatened violence. From where she stood across the grass, it didn’t seem like she was remotely interested in violence this time. Her eyes barely left Damon’s hand, where the invention was nestled.

“Why, Isobel?” Elena couldn’t bring herself let go of this opportunity to have this last conversation with her birth mom before handing the invention to her but, even so, she couldn’t call the woman standing in front of her ‘Mom’. Desperately, she was hoping that there might be a chink in the armour somewhere, that Isobel might soften now that the stress of getting what she wanted was nearly abated. She was hoping that Isobel might, for one second, look at her like a mother looks at her daughter.

She was doomed to be disappointed.

“Why what?” Her red lips curved in a dispassionate smile even as her eyes only barely flickered away from Damon’s hand.

“Why… why is this the only contact you’ve bothered to have with me? You didn’t want to get to know me at all?”

“No.” Just that. No elaboration, no sound of regret. Elena was too wrapped up in her own pain to catch the movement of Stefan behind her holding Damon back as the older brother tried to surge forward in response to Elena’s pain, but Isobel noticed. “I think,” she told Elena, “that you have more than enough people in your life ‘wanting to get to know you’.”

The way Isobel said it, it almost sounded like a threat. Elena was deaf to that. “But you’re my mom.”

Isobel shrugged. “I’m bored of this. The invention?”

Stefan was looking at Damon, still holding onto him, as if not sure he could trust what Damon would do if he let him go. Truthfully, it was surprising that Isobel was still willing to have him come closer to her after his recent movement.

Isobel only looked impatient. If they’d not been standing on grass, she would likely have tapped her heeled foot. “The invention, or Elena suffers,” Isobel said, the words prompted from boredom rather than interest.

That took whatever wind was left out of Damon’s sails. He claimed his arm back, shrugging it violently in his jacket sleeve. His jaw was tight as he walked past Elena, pausing only long enough to mutter, “You alright?”

Elena made some sort of disembodied sound in response, that didn’t seem to do a lot to reassure him. But there wasn’t a lot more that they could do. Bonnie had de-spelled Jonathan Gilbert’s invention, Isobel could have it, for all the luck it would give her. Elena’s fractured heart was a small bi-product on the wayside. She tried to close her heart against it.

The exchange done, Elena couldn’t quite hold back one last smart ass quip. “You took a risk with Damon. How did you know he would give up the invention?”

Like all the others, it bit her squarely on the behind. “Because he's in love with you.”

Isobel was the first one outside of the three of them who had spoken aloud what had only been between the three of them—and, well, Jeremy—until now. Neither one of the boys jumped to deny it, but they wouldn’t have even if it hadn’t been true. Then, it would have been no more than the misguided ramblings of a nuisance. They would have shrugged their shoulders and disregarded it.

Elena did her best to try that act now, try to show that she was unfazed. It wasn’t fair that someone who had never shown any inclination towards mothering her should have any idea about what was going on in Elena’s life.

“Whatever,” she said, suddenly very tired and no longer wanting to play these word games with Isobel. She knew now they were likely to have another show down when the invention didn’t work, but then it would be different. It would be like the invention had never worked, and there would be nothing further Isobel would be able to do. Nothing, except to leave town.

It had been a long night, and Elena wanted nothing more than to go back home.

She considered going back to her house with Jenna but, by the time she and the boys returned to the boarding house, it seemed like so much trouble to go the rest of the way home. Jeremy and Anna were both sitting up in the living room, waiting for her, Elena thought.

“I’ve already called Jenna,” Jeremy said, holding his phone up with a vague wrist motion. “She knows we’re both planning to stay out tonight, so you don’t have to worry about going home if you don’t want to.” He paused, glancing between the vampire brothers, and his sister. “How did it go?”

“She took the invention.” That was about the best it could have gone. All three of them had come back alive and unmarked. Elena shouldn’t have expected more.

Except she had, and it was proving much harder to shut her heart up.

Jeremy wasn’t the only one looking at her in concern. It was all too much for her to deal with right now. She barely even looked Stefan in the eye as she directed her next question to him. “Do you mind if I crash up in your bed? I’m wrecked.”

“Of course,” Stefan said, and she didn’t wait on the pleasantries on goodnights. Tonight, she just made her own lonely way up the stairs to Stefan’s bedroom.

The bed was soft and the sheets smelt like him. Mostly, that smelled like clean soap and just the faintest hint of metal. Iron, perhaps. Elena rolled over. She didn’t want to be smelling him tonight. She didn’t want to be anything.

It would have been too much to ask that Stefan not join her in his own bed that night, but as soon as he walked in, hesitantly hovering by the door, Elena turned her head and wished she had have muscled up the energy to go home to her own bed. She moved over to one side of his bed, making room for him without talking.

Stefan took of his shoes and his shirt. He didn’t crawl into bed beside her, just lay on top of the covers on the space of the bed she had freed up for him.

“Please stop looking at me,” she asked him, coolly.

She felt Stefan shifting, but the claustrophobic feeling didn’t ease. Eventually, he said, “Elena, I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.” She tried to say it gently, even spared him a glance before she returned her eyes to the top of his dresser. “I’m just tired.”

“Elena, I think we should talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s painfully obvious.” Stefan sighed. “Just… indulge me. What are you feeling right now?”

“Right now?” Elena shifted her legs, but didn’t move her body. She still wasn’t quite ready to look at him. “I’m feeling like if I don’t have any expectations of people, they won’t hurt me. I’m feeling like what’s to stop you or Damon changing the way you act to me one day, and me looking into cold, unfeeling eyes when you’re looking at me? You’ve both said you can shut it off. Well, maybe sometimes it’s a good thing for we small humans to try once and again.” She knew she was speaking out of hurt and that, very likely, she was only succeeding to worry Stefan further but, damn it, he’d asked, he’d pushed her to answer.

Stefan was silent for a very long time after she spoke. Elena closed her eyes, wishing for sleep to take her away from this. Just for a little while. She was sure it would be alright again in the morning. There certainly wouldn’t be some new drama that demanded her attention and all of her energy. And then she could apologise to Stefan for tonight. And she would hug him, and she would hug Damon…

Stefan rolled her body so that she opened her eyes and, just like that, she was suddenly facing him. Even without the sustenance of human blood, he was still much stronger than her. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it. Except with her words.

“Stefan, this isn’t a good time,” she said, but it wasn’t about that. Stefan wasn’t leaning close to her, wasn’t angling for a hug or close contact that would make everything better. In fact, now that she looked at him properly, she saw that his eyes were closed off to her, far quicker than she’d been able to shut herself away even as much as she’d managed. “Stefan…?”

“Your fear,” Stefan said, and his voice was raspier than it usually was. Not like Damon’s could be, but not quite like Stefan’s either. She had a faint memory trying to rise to the surface, but all thought and memory was taken from her as Stefan captured both of her wrists in one of his larger hands.

“Stefan, what are you doing?” It was impossible for Elena to keep herself distant from him now, impossible not to look him in the eye as he hovered over her, still a maintaining a respectable distance between their bodies.

Stefan blinked sloe eyes and ran his tongue over his teeth. Elena’s eyes widened as the veins began to lift ever so slightly on the skin under his eyes, and his teeth became a little sharper. “Even were I to shut myself off, I don’t think I could act coldly towards you,” Stefan said, as though pondering it. Elena was struck with where she remembered this tone from.

This same room, after the Miss Mystic pageant, before the vervain dart. But she had no vervain dart now, no Damon waiting silently on the other side of the door. Her wrists were bound by his hand, and Stefan’s teeth were sharper.

And, again, Elena felt that thrill of… something, mixed in with the healthy dose of fear he was inspiring.

“Stefan, I don’t understand. Why…?”

“I love you, Elena. With all sides of me.” Stefan’s blood darkened eyes shifted back and forth between hers. She tried to see the familiar Stefan she knew in there but, despite his words, she couldn’t see him. This was what he’d meant, then. Her fear that one day he would look at her from behind closed up eyes.

But he was right, too. This wasn’t cold, wasn’t unfeeling. Even when he closed away the side of him she knew—the side of him that was human, she thought—there was still an intensity to him that wasn’t only about hunger when he was looking down at her.

She raised herself up from the mattress, as much as she could manage around her bound wrists, and touched her lips against his.

He shrank back the instant she made contact. “Uh uh,” he said, eyelids half lowered over his eyes. “That’s not what this is about.”

Since she knew what this was about, it seemed a dumb thing to play the game of asking him to spell it out. Instead, she used the moments to study him, looking in his eyes which he left open for her to peruse. Open, at the same time as being closed. It was strange.

“I get it,” Elena said at length, feeling much more calm herself than before this had begun.

Stefan just smirked, and it was as different to his usual smirk as the rest of him was different to his usual. “Not yet, you don’t,” he answered, before trailing his free hand down her side.

It felt different to the way he usually touched her. Dispassionate, but not just that. It was as though there were a layer of plastic or paper between them, something that he had imposed when he shut himself off from her. But she still responded to his touches. Still responded to his lips against her stomach, the nips as he bit into her. He wasn’t drawing blood, but he’d never so much as bitten her before this. Elena gasped, then found she liked the sensation of it, then found herself arching towards his bites as well as his trailing kisses. She found herself moaning, the only sound in the room, for Stefan was completely silent in his detachment from her. Engaging, but not quite engaged. Elena would have wondered if he was only touching her in this way because he had shut himself off if she’d been able to spare the brain space for thinking.

In the end, he did not bring her to orgasm, didn't give her what she needed. Elena pouted and panted over that, but even she knew that she would appreciate it later on. At the time, though, she struggled to regain her breath, alternately burying her head into Stefan’s shoulder, and looking into his eyes to see that distant-intense gaze.

Eventually, she found enough brain space to be able to mumble, “Is this what you were like when you first became a vampire?”

“Perhaps.” He also spoke shorter sentences to her while he was like this. But he didn’t look away, didn’t try to evade. The veins on his face were now quite pronounced, but Elena realised she hadn’t really seen them for quite some time. She thought of lifting a hand to trace her fingers against them, but thought better of it. She had no idea how much restraint it was taking for him to hold back from… well, drinking from her, and she wouldn’t lightly hand that up to him again.

Nor would she ask him to revert back to the Stefan she knew and loved. Elena had enough trust in him to know that he would likely revert back once they woke up together the next morning. Her fingers tightened around her arm, and she took a final deep breath.

“Perhaps… we should sleep, now?” she asked him.

Stefan nodded his head twice, then shifted in the bed so that he was spooning her. Elena’s fingers stayed clasped around his arm, holding all of Stefan to her, and knowing she would never worry about him going cold on her again.


	4. Bloodstream (4/4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just more thanks to the wonderful coquilleon for being my beta, and my memory for suddenly remembering I'd been slack about posting the rest of this fic up.

Maybe it was because, along with Bonnie’s memories of her grandmother, Bonnie shared the memories of Elena’s distress after the death of both of her parents, but the Jonathan Gilbert invention definitely seemed to have been de-spelled. Days went by, then weeks. Nothing happened. Elena found herself beginning to wake up every morning expecting that this would be the morning that the next fight would begin. Even Jeremy began to walk around with more tension than was his norm.

“How come we haven’t heard anything back about the invention?”

“I don’t know, Jer. Maybe it’s a good thing.” While trying to convince him, she quietly tried to allow her soft words to comfort herself. There was no reason, after all, to think that Bonnie would betray them. Bonnie had never lied to her, and she had said outright that she would do this. Which meant that it was a good thing that nothing had happened.

Maybe Isobel had already left town.

If that was the case, all Elena could summon was a large dose of good riddance. Or, that was all she was willing to admit to herself, anyway.

She tried to extend that carefree attitude across to her time spent in the boarding house. It was a different dynamic now, with Anna having claimed one of the rooms in the house as her own. She didn't have a lot of possessions, but she made the room her own. Jeremy walked from school to the boarding house with her on more than one occasion.

She was gradually becoming more comfortable with lying in Damon's arms, or receiving those absent touches from him, in front of Anna. For her part, she didn't make smart comments about Katherine to her anymore. Maybe Jeremy had said something to her. More likely, there was no benefit that the snark would give her. They had an easy arrangement that felt like home whenever any of the five of them were in the boarding house together. Damon didn't look like it was a dare or a lark anymore when he sat next to Elena and she twined her fingers with his. He had started teaching Jeremy how to move more effectively so that he would be able to defend himself against any vampires who came at him. Jeremy still comforted Anna on the loss of her mom. Anna and Damon ganged up on Stefan all the time, but it was always in good fun. Even Alaric became like a trusted uncle to Jeremy and Elena. He covered for them whenever they weren't at home as often as they should be. The words Elena had said to Bonnie became steadily more true. That feeling of family within the boarding house did extend to include Anna and, of course, Jeremy who had already been her family before.

Eventually, however, it all had to come to a head. In the end, Elena realised she'd been nowhere near prepared enough for what would happen if Bonnie's spell didn't work.

When it happened, she was actually in conversation with Caroline, Bonnie and Matt. She'd been spending a shockingly small amount of time around any of them, which had been a sorry demonstration of gratitude to Bonnie’s de-spelling of Jonathan Gilbert's invention. It would have been a really sorry demonstration, Elena thought, if she hadn’t even been able to make time with them when things were quiet.

Damon could see where Elena was standing with Caroline and Bonnie, all of them laughing at something Matt had just said. The blonde boy seemed so proud of himself. It was quite sweet, really, if you liked that sort of thing.

Stefan was standing next to him. Damon glanced in his direction, but his gaze was on Elena. Sometimes it was strange, this new-found friendship between them. It felt, at times, like Stefan should have been antagonistic, or warning Damon from doing anything with Elena. Damon kept waiting to hear something like that from his brother, kept having his own responses right there at the ready. But they were never needed. Each and every single time, Damon swallowed those unneeded responses, and the closeness between them continued.

To Stefan’s mind, he couldn’t have been happier than to see Elena enjoying a laugh that some could say was typical of her age group. To be encouraged, even. It had never been Stefan’s intent or inclination to take that from Elena when they started seeing each other. Bad luck, and an over-abundance of vampire activity within Mystic Falls, had taken care of that, but Stefan had never wanted that for her. Even standing here, watching her as they were, Stefan felt suddenly like they were intruding on her space. Like that, at any moment, she would look over and see them, possibly assume that something was wrong, and leave her friends to come over to them.

Stefan tugged against Damon’s elbow, a signal that perhaps they two should both give Elena some space here.

Damon’s eyebrows lowered then, plainly misunderstanding the silent communication Stefan had been intending. He shrugged Stefan’s hand from his arm.

“What are you doing?” Damon asked.

Maybe Damon only wanted to watch Elena’s face, smiling unguarded with her friends while she thought no one else was watching. Maybe he hadn’t intended to be seen, and resented Stefan trying to change that plan. Stefan didn’t get a chance to ask.

Pain exploded behind his eyes. He got out one gasp and managed to squint his eyes long enough to focus on Damon, and saw that he’d fallen to the same dire straits as Stefan. Pain and attempts to keep in control of it contorted Damon’s face. The invention. It had to be.

**

It was the change in Bonnie’s expression that alerted her.

“Bonnie? What is it?”

Matt and Caroline stopped in the middle of the story they’d both been telling together as Elena’s soft voice drew attention to Bonnie.

“Oh no...” was all Bonnie said before, on quick feet, she started walking away from them.

Caroline flashed a confused look to Matt. “Well. That was rude,” she surmised.

Elena wasn’t listening to Caroline. Her eyes had just caught oneo the same thing that Bonnie had seen, and Elena wasn’t settling for a swift walk in that direction. She overtook Bonnie quickly, but was still a fair way from Damon or Stefan. She heard Caroline crying out her name from behind her but ignored it. In that moment, all that mattered to her was getting to Stefan and Damon. Matt would have to take care of the rest.

She never got a chance to reach Stefan or Damon. Another person intercepted her, and Elena was struck still, unable to tear her eyes away.

“Katherine,” Elena whispered, looking at brown eyes, brown hair, slim figure of the woman standing in front of her. The only differences between them was the curl in Katherine’s hair and the individual clothing they each wore. It couldn’t have been anything else.

Katherine had tipped her head to the side, considering Elena as intently as she herself was being considered. “So...” She crossed her arms over her breasts. “This is my doppelganger. And you already know who I am. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be,” Elena said, not caring at the moment that she was staring down a several hundred year old monster.

But Katherine didn’t look annoyed. If anything, she looked amused. “You’ve got spunk. I suppose you ought to, bearing such a strong resemblance as you do. Does it drive our boys wild? I recall when it used to bring out the best in them when I laid out the challenge...”

“What did you do to them?” Elena gasped out, hating the smile in Katherine’s voice, a voice she knew intimately as her own, and needing it to stop right now.

“Come now, I hope you didn’t think you were the only ones with a witch.” Katherine’s eyes widened. “Oh, you did? How sweet.”

It only occurred then to Elena to look behind her from where Caroline had cried out, and only just after to look beyond Katherine at where Stefan and Damon had been. Bonnie was lying out cold on the ground. Caroline looked frantic while Matt was checking her vitals. Of Damon and Stefan, though, there was no sign.

The indulgent smile that touched Katherine’s lips and not her eyes wiped clear as her eyes narrowed on Elena. “You didn’t think I came back to this town unprepared?”

But Katherine was a vampire. It didn’t make any sense... “But, h-how come the Gilbert invention isn’t hurting you?”

“I’m much older than any vampire you’ve met.” Katherine looked disappointed, as though Elena should have known better. “Takes a lot more than that to stop me.”

Elena didn’t like the sound of that. Not at all.

Katherine didn’t seem to care whether Elena liked it or not. She steam-rolled on ahead. “Now, down to business. You want to save your vampire boys and I want to—”

“And Anna,” Elena bit out. She couldn’t let another of Jeremy’s girlfriends slip through her fingers, not if she had the power to stop it.

“Anna? Anna’s still around?” Katherine waved a hand, completely at odds with the momentary interest in her tone. “And Anna. Can you guess what I want in return?”

Her smile was wide and predatory, and Elena was afraid to ask. Katherine sighed. Her smile turned bored. “Do you want to save our boys, or not?” she snapped.

Terrified beyond words, Elena just nodded her head.

“Good. Either you willingly give your compliance to me, or you condemn our lovers to die.” This time there was no false smiles, no amusement, nothing predatory, no emotion at all. There was only a slender woman with arms crossed over her chest, waiting for an answer.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Elena blurted out, almost choking on the expectation.

But this time, Katherine didn’t reply with anything.

Time was running out. The little conversation she'd had already with Katherine had cost so many precious moments. Damon and Stefan might already have permanent damage. If the town council hadn’t picked them out already. And Anna. Elena didn’t want to think how Jeremy would react if he lost another person he loved.

“Alright,” Elena mumbled quickly, tearing budding promptly in her eyes. She couldn’t think about what Katherine would want her compliance for later. It was more important to save Stefan and Damon now.

“Alright?” Katherine asked, and it was so, so eerie hearing the same voice speaking the same word in the same tone just after Elena had.

Elena couldn’t afford to focus on that. “Alright, you will have my compliance. Just save them. Please.”

Katherine smiled a smile that was much more genuine than any that had come before. “Of course,” she said. “All you had to do was ask.”

And then she was gone, and Elena could only trust that she would do what she’d promised. She would, Elena forced herself to believe, for Katherine would not have her compliance if she didn’t follow through with her part of the agreement.

Still, not quite ready to face being beaten yet, Elena moved off to try to find any of them herself.

**

They were in an unused warehouse on the edge of town. It had been, of course, the last place she’d thought to check but, from the way they were just lying there and no one else was around, Elena couldn’t help but see Katherine’s hand in it. She might have collapsed under the weight of that woman’s expectation for a moment, if she hadn’t heard her name.

“Elena...”

Thin and reedy, but Stefan’s voice sure enough. Elena rushed over to him, tears already overflowing her eyes. They surfaced as fast as she tried to rub them away, trying to see clearly through them to figure out how badly hurt he was.

“We’re going to be okay,” Damon said. He was behind her. Unlike Stefan, he could stand, so long as he was leaning. A couple of boxes piled upon each other worked to make a crutch for Damon. It must have been the human blood in his system that had allowed him to recover that much. Elena tried to check herself in her relief, tried to approach him gently, to hug him gently. His arm around her waist was much looser than it was usually. At her first touch, he’d almost seemed fall instinctively into her but, catching himself at the last minute, managed to maintain his can’t-hold-me-down-for-long posture. He was going to be fine. Stefan was going to be fine. Anna was curled up in a ball near one of the walls of the warehouse. She looked up through haunted eyes at Elena.

“Who brought us here?” she asked.

If it had been one of the boys who asked her, Elena didn’t know if she could have lied. The fact that it was Anna who asked was both blessing and curse. She kept her eyes trained on the shorter girl while focusing on answering her question as neutrally as she could. “I don’t know. Are you okay?”

Anna just hunched her arms closer into herself. The nod she gave was stilted.

A sound in the doorway of the warehouse inspired Elena’s fight response, although she didn’t know any kind of moves that would have been effective on a larger human than her, let alone a vampire.

It was a larger human than her, but not a vampire, who entered the warehouse slowly. Matt’s movements made him look like someone approaching wild or injured animals. As his eyes adjusted to the lessened light in the room, he sought out Elena. His eyes were tired, but he summoned up a half smile for Elena when he found her.

“I thought you might need some help,” he said.

It almost brought tears to her eyes again, the knowledge that there was now someone who she could lean on. “We need to get them out of here,” she told Matt. He didn’t need to know the context. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t ask. All that needed to happen was getting the three vampires back to the boarding house. She thought Anna and Damon would need the least assistance. Matt would almost need to carry Stefan.

Things were... better once they were in the boarding house. Things almost looked normal with Damon, Anna and Stefan lounging around in the great chairs in the living room. The dim lighting masked the Stefan’s pallor. Of all things, it was actually the sight of Matt standing by one of the arm chairs that stood out. All Elena kept thinking of was the last time Matt had been here, Stefan showing off his car, Damon having sexual relations with his mum up against the wall. She’d had the conversation with Caroline about Matt that night. Everything was so different from back then.

“Where’s Caroline, and Bonnie?” her thoughts prompted her to ask.

The question, after several minutes of silence, got everyone’s attention. She thought, if it hadn’t been a room full of vampires, someone might have startled.

Somehow, Matt seemed to pull off seeming the least harassed of them all. “Um, Caroline drove Bonnie off to the hospital after she... fell. They’re fine,” Matt said, lest Elena embrace more things that she needed to worry about.

Elena nodded mutely. The boarding house returned to the silence from before.

Eventually, Matt stood up. “I had better go. Make sure Caroline’s okay.”

“Thank you.” Stefan’s voice spoke up.

Matt paused for a moment, as if to see if Stefan was about to say anything else. When he didn’t, Matt nodded. “No problem, man. Hope you feel better soon.” He nodded briefly to Damon and to Anna, before Elena left with him to see him out. She couldn’t sense vampires close by like the others could have, but seeing the area out front of the boarding house clear of anyone, human or vampire, did something to reassure her.

She tried to steady herself, focusing on the positives rather than on Katherine, before she returned to the living room. As she was walking back, she suddenly thought of Jeremy.

As she pulled out her phone and held it to her ear, Damon slowly rounded the hall into sight. Elena brought her finger up to her lips as Jeremy answered the phone.

“What is it, Elena?”

“It’s Anna. She’s okay but... can you come around to the boarding house? Something’s happened.”

“I’m on my way.”

Jeremy hung up, and Elena was holding onto a phone with nobody on the other end. Damon advanced towards her.

“We’re going to be okay,” he let her know.

Elena nodded. She let him come all the way to her, to put his arms around her and be comforted by him this time. “I was just scared. I saw you as you both fell.” Elena clamped her mouth shut. The next thing she had seen was Katherine, and then Stefan and Damon hadn’t been in front of her anymore. She didn’t know how she was supposed to explain that.

“I know,” he surprised her by saying. “We were right there watching you with Matt and the rest.”

“I didn’t... know...” Elena replied. He would have known she was there even if she hadn’t said anything. It struck her that she would have known she’d been aware of something just because she had been looking for them afterwards. Katherine had placed her in a very difficult position.

Damon moved onto the subject she’d so been hoping to avoid. “If you were so close... Didn’t you tell Anna you didn’t know how we’d gotten to the warehouse?” His arms were looser around her now, like he was trying to pull back and look into her face.

Elena kept her eyes averted. Under her hands, she could feel him stiffen, and hated it. Maybe it would be best to tell the truth.

But it was Katherine. Nothing Damon could hear about Katherine could be good.

“People got in between us. By the time I got to where you had been, someone had taken you away. You really don’t remember what had happened?” She turned the questions back onto him, partly in the hope that he had seen something that would help them somehow, partly to take the heat off herself.

But Damon shook his head slowly. “Nothing. Just a high pitched sound. And then...” Damon shrugged. He didn’t look like he wanted to remember it, and Elena couldn’t blame him.

Forget about Katherine. Forget about everything apart from him. “I love you so much,” she told him, and this time the truth of that was shining through her eyes, no evasion necessary. She twined her arms around him, bringing him closer. “I don’t know what I would have done if anything...”

Damon’s head swooped down, and he took her lip in a kiss that took her unawares. Elena tried to keep conscious that, not half an hour ago, Damon had been most likely unconscious on the floor of a warehouse. She tried to hold onto him gently. It didn’t work. Damon’s passion swept her up as their first kiss closed out the entire rest of the world. Somehow, it didn’t make sense that it was the natural logical progression of their day, but Elena forgot about that. She completely forgot about Stefan and about Anna, both sitting in the next room, completely forgot about Jeremy already on his way.

Already arrived, in fact. Jeremy came through the door without knocking or waiting on anyone to let him in. Elena gasped against Damon, but Damon did not her go. Jeremy noted briefly what they had been in the middle of doing and walked past it, moving quickly on his way to get to Anna.

Elena looked up to Damon and found herself trapped there in his eyes. He took away her ability to speak even before his hand reached out and trailed his fingers across her cheekbone and down her jaw.

“Nothing’s going to happen to me. You’re mine, too.”

Though he seemed determined to make it a statement, the slightest amount of uncertainty made its way through. Had she not come to know him so well, she might have missed it. Damon would certainly have wanted her to miss it.

It was the first time that he’d officially made such a claim and, for Elena, it had been true now for weeks.When she made her answer, she let on not at all that she’d picked up anything of the sort, and said only,

“I’m yours.”


End file.
